Hitachi Ltd, Sanyo Electric Co and Siemens AG have announced an alliance in the field of advanced memory cards. The three say they will work together to develop a large-capacity medium for recording music and video clips.
Sony Corp and several partners including Matsushita Electric Industrial Co are also working to commercialize advanced memory cards utilizing their own standards. The two groups will be vying to formulate standards and go into production as quickly as possible.
Hitachi and partners plan to develop a card with at least 64MB of flash memory and an integrated circuit designed to protect copyrights. It will be the same size as the MultiMediaCard, which is already used in digital videocameras and European cellular phones, Hitachi said.
Compact memory cards are now being used in portable music players and digital cameras because of their resistance to vibrations. The cards can also be used for music delivery services over cellular phones.
Two of the three partners in the Japanese-European partnership Sanyo Electric Co and Hitachi Ltd have in fact also joined forces with Fujitsu Ltd to launch a music delivery service for mobile phones. They have jointly developed a system that enables PHS (personal handyphone system) and cellular phones to download music with sound quality comparable to that of a MiniDisc player. The phones will use the card developed by Sanyo, Hitachi and Siemens.
